Why has she - “middle-aged mother, centrist politics, suburban life” - been chosen by Silvina Vilcapampa, the rebellious scion of a rich and powerful Argentine family, who is perhaps a sustainability guru or an eco-terrorist, to carry out her enigmatic wishes? Is it because of Jane’s job in internet surveillance, her past as a wrestler or the explosive store of rage left by her abusive and grief-ridden childhood?Ĭonfronting the truth of global ecological devastation is hopeless, so Jane has “learned to care less.” Silvina calls it “the fatal adaptation.” But Jane is awakened by entries in Silvina’s ardent, troubled diary - “ We’re ghosts trapped in the wreckage of our systems. Soon Jane becomes embroiled in a high-stakes scavenger hunt as she tries to understand the call to action this strange gift represents. She is here, she says, “to show you how the world ends.”Īt the beginning of this journey, Jane receives a key that leads her to a storage locker containing a taxidermied, and extinct, hummingbird.
Jeff VanderMeer’s 20th book, the ambitious ecological thriller “Hummingbird Salamander,” asks us to engage with this reality, and with the possibility that Homo sapiens too could be on the path to extinction, thanks to the species’ “destroying its own habitat.” The narrator of the novel, who calls herself Jane Smith, may already be dead by the time we read the opening lines. Humans are, of course, profoundly implicated in this loss of life and biodiversity. Today’s pace of extinction is hundreds if not thousands of times greater than the natural extinction rate. HUMMINGBIRD SALAMANDER By Jeff VanderMeer
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